“The unexamined life is not worth living.”
— Socrates
There are days you know you will remember for the rest of your life.
My last day in private practice was one of them.
For more than three decades, I had spent my days looking through a microscope. Thousands upon thousands of skin biopsies had passed before my eyes. Every diagnosis carried weight because behind every glass slide was a person waiting to hear whether a suspicious mole was harmless or whether a small piece of tissue would forever change the course of his or her life.
Medicine had become more than my profession. It had become part of my identity.
Now it was over.
The final reports had been signed. The last consultations completed. My microscope, which had occupied countless hours of my life, rested silently on the bench where it had always been. After thirty-one years, I would soon lock the office door for the last time.
It seemed only fitting to spend my final afternoon with the people who had made that journey possible.
I ordered lunch for all of my co-workers and had it delivered to the office. I had no agenda beyond simply being together. Although I had often eaten lunch at my desk while reviewing slides or returning phone calls, this day was different. I wasn’t interested in productivity anymore. I simply wanted to enjoy their company one last time.
As we gathered around the conference table, the conversation came easily. We laughed about memorable cases, impossible deadlines, practical jokes, and the countless little stories that only people who have worked together for years can appreciate. It was comfortable. Familiar. If someone had walked into the room, they might never have guessed that this ordinary lunch marked the end of an extraordinary chapter in all of our lives.
Then the conversation took an unexpected turn.
Someone mentioned a news story about a man who had become involved in a religious cult.
Almost instantly, everyone had an opinion.
“I can’t believe people fall for things like that.”
“You’d think someone would see the warning signs.”
“I’ve always wondered how intelligent people get drawn into those groups.”
I listened quietly as the conversation continued, saying very little. Their comments were understandable. Most of us like to believe we would recognize deception if it ever confronted us. We imagine that only the naïve, the desperate, or the uneducated could be misled so completely.
Then one of my co-workers looked directly at me.
“Doctor,” she asked, “do you know anyone who was involved in a cult?”
Time seemed to slow.
For just a moment, I considered giving the answer everyone expected.
“No.”
Instead, I smiled.
“Yes.”
Several heads turned toward me.
Then I quietly added four words that no one in the room could have anticipated.
“You’re looking at him.”
Silence.
The lively conversation that had filled the room only moments before vanished completely.
Their expressions revealed a mixture of surprise, confusion, and curiosity. Every one of them knew I was a committed Christian. Some had worked beside me for years. They had watched me pray with people. They had heard me speak openly about my faith. Yet none of them had ever heard the story of how I had come to believe.
I hadn’t planned to tell it that afternoon.
In fact, I hadn’t planned to make any speech at all.
But sitting there in that conference room, I realized that God had quietly arranged something far better than anything I could have organized myself.
For the next twenty minutes, I took my co-workers on a journey that began decades earlier.
I told them about growing up in Hawaii and attending a private Episcopal school, all the while quietly convincing myself that God probably didn’t exist. I described arriving at college carrying far more questions than answers and discovering, much to my surprise, that intellectual confidence often masks spiritual emptiness.
I explained how I became involved with a group that taught an attractive and reassuring message: every religion ultimately leads to the same God. It sounded tolerant. Inclusive. Enlightened. More importantly, it seemed reasonable. I wasn’t looking for deception. I believed I had finally found the truth.
Looking back now, I realize how sincere I was.
And how wrong I was.
That realization has stayed with me for more than forty years.
The greatest danger in life is not believing a lie.
The greatest danger is believing a lie because you are convinced it is the truth.
As I continued searching, however, questions began to surface that refused to disappear. The worldview I had embraced could answer some questions, but not the deepest ones. Gradually, almost reluctantly, I found myself examining the claims of Jesus Christ with the same seriousness that I expected of myself when making a difficult diagnosis under the microscope.
To my surprise, Christianity did not ask me to stop thinking.
It challenged me to think more honestly than I ever had before.
When I finished speaking, the room remained quiet for several moments.
No one hurried to change the subject.
No one offered a clever reply.
Instead, there was a silence that often follows the sharing of something deeply personal.
As I looked around the table, I felt an overwhelming sense of gratitude. On the final day of my career, God had opened one last opportunity to share the most important story of my life with the people who had walked beside me through so many years.
It wasn’t the farewell I had planned.
It was far better.
Later that afternoon, I locked the office door for the last time.
Standing there with my keys in my hand, I realized that while one chapter of my life had ended, another was only beginning.
The conversation over lunch had reminded me of a question that has quietly followed me throughout my life—a question that has shaped nearly every important decision I have ever made.
How do we know what is true?
That question led me into medicine.
It led me into a cult.
It led me out again.
It has guided my study of science, history, philosophy, and Scripture.
Ultimately, it led me to Jesus Christ.
This book is the story of that search.
Perhaps your journey has been very different from mine. Perhaps you have never questioned what you believe. Or perhaps you have questioned everything.
Either way, I invite you to come with me.
Not because my life is extraordinary, but because the search for truth belongs to every one of us.
The pages that follow are not simply the story of my life.
They are the story of a question.
And perhaps, by the end, you may discover that it has become your question as well.
Examine yourselves, to see whether you are in the faith. Test yourselves.
2 Corinthians 13:5 (ESV)
Love and trust the Lord; seek His will in your life.
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